Angular Renderer: API Symmetry

[manfredsteyer]

Currently, the Angular Renderer's API is asymmetric when it comes to custom catalogs

• For building a custom catalog, there is a createFunctionImplementation but no createAngularComponentImplementation

• When building a custom catalog, there is an extraComponents property but no extraFunctions property. Hence, adding a component looks different than adding a function:

export const customCatalog = new BasicCatalogBase({
  id: 'https://example.com/catalogs/flights42-a2ui-demo',
  extraComponents: [milesProgressEntry],
  functions: [...BASIC_FUNCTIONS, formatIdImplementation],
});

[ditman]

Yeah, the "BasicCatalogBase" constructor is a little bit odd, it has a little bit more flexibility that what it should. Instead users should do something like:

export const customCatalog = new Catalog({
  id: 'blah',
  components: [...basicCatalog, myCustomComponent],
  functions: [...BASIC_FUNCTIONS, myFunction],
});

IMO the BasicCatalog constructor is allowing more things than what I'd like. WDYT @josemontespg?

[josemontespg]

Agreed, we should improve this, in a way that is backwards compatible.
I think we should deprecate the extraComponents in the BasicCatalogBase constructor option (while continuing to support it)

[manfredsteyer]

Deprecating extraComponents sounds good. I just rememberd, why I have not just used the components property instead: The thing ist, while extraComponents and functions are arras, components is an object (very likely key/value pairs). So, also this aspect does not feel symmetric compared with the functions. And honestly, I'm not sure how to use these key/values pairs.

Do we need to refactor the components property too?